Heh, the bleeding – you ain’t kidding. One time when I had to give my old cat a bath, she scratched me up so badly I looked like I’d been wrapped in barbed wire and rolled down a gravel-covered hillside.

And this was no simple bath. She’d walked under my brother’s shitty car…and through the pan collecting the dripping motor oil. Yeah. Motor-oil-caked cat fur. That was…a time.

I have succumbed to the temptation several times when my cats get in the tub. When the cold shower hits them they freak out and run off so fast I don’t think they connected it with me. Thus I was able to do it more than once. Then I hypocritically act all concerned, and offer to dry them with a towel. Oh, poor kittywitty, what happened?

She has crawled into the shower a couple times. I’m not as scared of her sharp claws, so I did what all loving, caring cat owners would do in such a situation: I turned on that shower and watched her run as fast as she could to hide under a bed!

My google-fu is failing me. Anyone have a sense of what time we will know the outcome on election night? Not the official tally, but which state will seal the deal for PBO? Want to plan my drinking appropriately.

OMG. Ladyfriend would have found your body. Then laughed her ass off because you deserved it joik. Not to mention what wifey would do to you if she found out. Rusty pitchfork ain’t just a catchphrase you know.

We have two cats: one is a Jakarta cat (black and white with very little tail – genetic to Indonesian cats) who adopted us while we lived there. He thinks he is a dog; acts socially like a dog with people. And we have an adopted Maryland farm cat (female) who thinks she is “Henri” (see YouTube) but is ludicrously clumsy. The latter likes nothing more than leaping into the shower after the human occupant has vacated it to lap up the remnant water. Weird!

Recently we were subjected to “team-building” activities where I work (or try to, when I’m not forced to waste half the day playing stupid games). My fellow victims and I got to wondering why this foolishness appeals to the corporate mentality. Any ideas?

My black cat Ninja used to like to get between the shower curtain and the tub wall when I was showering and let his tail poke out and get soaked. He stopped doing that but he still jumps in when I’m done showering and soaks his tail in the water that’s draining away.

See, this is why I’m not a cat person. I can’t imagine doing this to my Otis. I love him like I’d love a child who I’d waited for all my life (which he kinda is, since we weren’t allowed to have pets as a child and my ex wouldn’t let me have one either).

For instance, he’s not as great when it comes to his hips any more, so we never take him out the side door, which has steps both inside and outside. So he waits, when I get home from work, at the top of the stairs for me most days. He got so excited today that he misjudged the stairs and fell down them and was sprawled out when I got inside the house. I was so afraid for him because he seemed to be hurt and not able to get up. I fell on my knees and petted him and tried to feel if he had any broken bones. It was terrifying. He’s a rescue that still, after 5 years, is anxious about being abandoned. After I got him up and I could see he was okay, I sat and cried and cried. If I’d turn water on him suddenly, he’d freak and all his old anxieties would be front and center. It would be a form of torture for him. I could never, ever, ever do that to him. Ever. I don’t think I’ve ever loved anyone or anything as much as I love him. I mean, I love my John, but it’s different. I’d die for my Otis and would do anything to never give him a moment of anxiety.

Cat owners seem to have a different relationship to their animals. I don’t doubt that they love them, but it’s a bit of a weird vibe for me, the way they seem to take pleasure in torturin each other.

A jury has ordered an American military contractor to pay $85 million after finding it guilty of negligence for illnesses suffered by a dozen Oregon soldiers who guarded an oilfield water plant during the Iraq war.

The jury deliberated for just two days before reaching a decision Friday against Kellogg Brown and Root.

The company was ordered to pay $6.25 million to each of the soldiers in punitive damages and $850,000 in noneconomic damages.

The suit was the first concerning soldiers’ exposure to a toxin at a water plant in southern Iraq that they were assigned to guard. The soldiers said they suffer from respiratory ailments after their exposure to sodium dichromate, and they fear that a carcinogen the toxin contains _ hexavalent chromium _ could cause cancer later in life.

@Rosie Outlook: It has always seemed to me that they’d get a lot more team building done just taking everyone to the beach and a nice seafood and beer lunch for a workday, but no one ever does that for me.

I am an exclusively dog person by necessity since I’m fiercely allergic to cats (asthma). So it always interests me when I find out about their strange little cat habits. For example, I understand they have an affinity for computer keyboards. Dogs can’t do that.

Better to fly in the day of the game than to be a Giant without electricity, heat, or the stress of being in the middle of it all. We’ll see. Though our Steelers have not been at their best this year, what with so many injuries and all.

Sorry, I just can’t help defending my Steelers. I don’t wish what New Yorkers or New Jerseyians have been through the last week.

When I lived in an apartment with a shower curtain, my late great cat Boris would sit on the edge of the tub and peer around the curtain to make sure I was okay with all of that water pouring down on me. We started calling him Safety Officer Boris since he had clearly put himself in charge of making sure we survived taking a shower.

It’s because we all suspect that our cats would be happy to kill and eat us if only they were big enough. That said, I have never turned the water on any of my cats when they were in the bathtub, though I probably should have tried it when Keaton decided the tub was the most awesomest litterbox ever.

My google-fu is failing me. Anyone have a sense of what time we will know the outcome on election night?

The gobshites on Washington Week suggested midnight, but I think that’s about right. West Coast closes at 8pm local, 11pm Eastern, so you’ll probably have earlyish calls there while Mrs Joyce Ballotrigger (R) of Bumfuck County Election Board in Ohio is still working out which floppy disk she saved the results from a dozen precincts.

@blingee: According to their Facebook feed, it’s secondary to Sandy.
Like a lot of websites served from the east coast.
‘We’re still experiencing connectivity issues while ConEd restores power. We’ll get back up as soon as we can.”

Turkish Vans are the swimming cats and plenty of people have pointed out he looks like one. Have you actually checked that he dislikes water?
Most of my cats have preferred to drink from moving water. This used to mean they jumped on top of the aquariums and tried to drink from the nice filtered running water. I had a screen top collapse and drop a childhood cat in. I’m afraid I laughed. she looked so comical. I used to raise guppies and the stupid fish were attracted to water movement. This meant they were attracted to cats tongues lapping water. the babies are small enough to drink by accident. One cat became so picky about her water after I was out of aquariums that I considered buying her a small one just to drink out of.
It takes a great deal of self control not to misuse an electric water gun. I discovered they are excellent for teaching them to stay off the table because they don’t even realize it’s you doing it-seems mysterious act of god to them. No sulky looks or anger. The problem is my father never grew up about gadgets. He was inviting his coworkers (engineers) over to show off the then new gadget and tormenting my cat. I had to hid it. The cat WAS funny and it was tempting. More than 20 years ago.
There are funny youtube videos about cats and water. quite a few are not afraid. i recall a cat happily putting itself under a running kitchen sink faucet. Very strange.

@Comrade Mary: Dan Pink is kinda hawt for an economist too. And I owe my great RSA love to Anne Laurie of course. I love the one on crises of capitalism. It’s a great Marxist critique on the 2008 crash. I can’t recall who does it now.

@Garbo: Ohio is almost certainly the one to watch, especially if Obama has won Virginia (which seems reasonably likely at this point) and definitely if he has won Florida (which is looking not out of the question.)

@geg6: Even though I’m a cat owner, I’m with you. I do nothing that might upset my little beasties, and feel guilty when I do ( other than making them wait for regular meal time to be fed). But some do have a spy vs spy relationship with their cats. I’m not sure what causes that.

@pseudonymous in nc: They won’t officially call (“project,” I mean) the race until the polls close in California (because it pisses people off), but it won’t be anywhere near midnight. They won’t need to look at the ballots to project a winner in California, so it’ll get called seconds after 11pm EST.

But Garbo wasn’t asking about the official call, just when we can relax and start the serious drinking celebration. That’s Ohio, IMHO.

Oh, I’m so glad to hear that! Too many people here freak me out, the way they seem to take such joy in freaking their cats out. I’m sure it’s not as horrible as I perceive it, but the whole thing just is too sadistic for me.

Thanks, all, for the assistance. The Virginia/Ohio/Florida nexus is what I’m looking for.

Next, what are everyone’s celebration plans? I’m going to take the day off and perhaps do a movie marathon…SkyFall, Flight, Argo. All enjoyed in the sweet knowledge that my popcorn is flavored with Mitt’s salty tears.

I used to work in an electroplating shop and the protocol for using the chrome plating tank was rigorous. Hexavalent chromium is nasty stuff, very carcinogenic. The ventilation hood and filtration system is there for a reason, you don’t want to breathe it. The chromium bath is heated so it steams, releasing toxic vapors. The rinsing process used is called “dragback”, which fills the main tank via the two rinse tanks, keeping the chromium in the system.

I’m glad that the soldiers are being compensated well, they probably have a miserable health future ahead of them.

But Garbo wasn’t asking about the official call, just when we can relax and start the serious drinking celebration. That’s Ohio, IMHO.

Yeah. Polls close in Ohio at 7:30pm ET, and if you’re in line then, you get to vote. Let’s assume that they’re still going to be checking their state-issued abacuses in Ohio when the west coast closes.

My niece had a cat who loved to play with streams of water with her paw. One night there was a party, and the cat kept accompanying people to the bathroom, in hopes. Then there was some panic amongst some of the guys, because the cat was trying to reach into their personal streams.

Their fears were not allayed by finding out the cat’s name was Stubby.

Based on Rachel’s show, both Ohio and Florida will be ballot counting shitshows because they have Repugs dicking around with voting hours, absentee ballots, etc. but it looks like a Virginia win will give me the comfort I need to get hammered.

OMG, Erick, Son of Erick, has a post up at Redstate where he sounds soooooo depressed:

People on the left are convinced if Mitt Romney wins blacks will be put in chains out in cotton fields and uteruses will be locked up.

People on the right are convinced if Barack Obama wins the stars and stripes will come down, the red banner of communism will go up, and this American experiment will be promptly concluded.

Which he follows with:

My world view is pretty simple. I think this world is destined to go to hell in a hand basket by design. I think things are supposed to go to pot. So if Barack Obama wins, I won’t be upset. If Mitt Romney wins, I won’t be running through the streets cheering. I think, either way, it is all part of the design. The world is going down hill. Barack Obama re-elected just gets us down the slippery slope faster in my view. For others, it is Mitt Romney who does.

So it’s lose-lose, no matter what! Now that ought to rev up the Rmoney White Horse support! So what does Erick say next? This:

God is sovereign and He is in charge and He will return. That is my hope and my ever present expectation.

We often get so wrapped up in the view of things at ground level, we forget to look at the world from 50,000 feet. In the historic, grand scheme of things, this too will end.

Yup, why worry when God is going to come and save the day! Eventually. Being a member of the Apocalyptic Death Cult of Christ sure is depressing.

A friend of mine once came up with a fantastic little business proposition: post-Rapture pet adoption. “We’re sinners, you’re going to be saved, but we really like pets, so pay us $10 a month and we promise to look after Miss Fluffy when the Rapture comes.”

Apparently Willard had a big rally in Ohio(probably bused a bunch of people in from other states), but an AP reporter on twitter is saying Condi Rice was a no-show, there was a really low energy level, and people were steadily streaming out during Willard’s speech.

ETA: There is also a rumor on twitter that a Phoenix area station(KPNX TV) is reporting the Republican Secretary of State deactivated 600,000 voters.

He was awesome, and I miss him lots. He was poisoned by Natural Balance cat food (they were buying their rice gluten from China so it was laced with melamine) and I’m still very bitter about it. But he was already 14 at that point in 2007, so there’s no guarantee he would be with me today anyway.

You also have to take into account that cats seem to really enjoy freaking us out (by, say, suddenly coming to alert in the middle of night until you’re convinced the Night Stalker is definitely outside the window, and then curling up and going back to sleep), so some people feel it’s payback.

The days of Democratic angst over Obama descending to 60% on Silver’s forecast seem a lifetime away. Oh, and remember Sullivan’s (and many Democrats’) moaning about Obama’s first debate performance? Good times.

Poor G is standing at the Apple store trying to get someone, anyone to sell him a Mac Mini. This is the problem with the “let’s get rid of the cash register and just have roaming salespeople” model — none of the employees wants to actually go in the back to get the stuff that’s not self-serve.

At a meeting today, David Wasserman from the Cook Political Report gave an inside baseball talk that was great. Bottom line: Obama wins, Dems hold Senate and gain seats in House but not enough to get majority. I can live with that, considering the alternative. Good news for the ACA, which is what my crew cares most about.

@nellcote: Aaaargh!!!!! Sodium dichromate is NOT a toxin! It’s a poison. Toxins are produced through the biological processes of living organisms, but for some reason, reporters have decided “toxin” is a friendlier-sounding synonym for “poison.” Call it what it is, dagnabit.

And hell, my Siamese Marvin likes to SLEEP in the shower. (He also will get between the shower curtains while we’re showering, just to keep a (crossed) eye on us. The spousal unit will turn the shower on when he’s in there and she wants to use the shower, but I’ll pick him up or lure him out because Marvin’s my (not so) little buddy.

What I find remarkable is how, every time Obama struggles or has a major challenge – and I mean every single time – the closeted Hillary supporters from 2008 pop up to shriek their laments. Then, when Obama wins or overcomes his challenge, they fall silent again, just waiting for the next opportunity to say some version of “I told you so!” Obnoxious.

That’s more “convergence to the nowcast”, idea being that there aren’t many Things that can get in the way. Unless the polls show pretty radical changes, it’s going to be an uptick of a tenth or two every day, and ~84% is probably going to be the final number.

ETA: There is also a rumor on twitter that a Phoenix area station(KPNX TV) is reporting the Republican Secretary of State deactivated 600,000 voters.

You can see the report on the station’s website.
If I understood correctly, yes, they have ~600,000 voters on this “deactivated” list of people who failed to keep their info current, but it’s been around for X number of months, and not something the SoS just flipped a switch on. A SoS spokesperson interviewed claims that no one on the list will be turned away, but they will be given a provisional ballot. The “deactivated” voter whom the piece focused on was able to get off the list. So, shrug. Not sure what’s really going on.

I am inclined to see Virginia as a bellwether. The constituencies that Obama needs to get a win there aren’t that different from the constituencies he needs for a victory in Ohio. In fact, if he does win Virginia, I would expect his Ohio margin to be double that in Virginia. Also too, in a similar way, I want to see New Hampshire go for Obama, an early sign that there aren’t enough living ‘moderate Republicans’ to have any impact on the election.

Like many of you, I expect the brazenly partisan Secretaries of State in Ohio and Florida to cause the vote counting to drag into the early morning hours. It is my hope that neither state becomes necessary to Obama’s re-election because the Republicans still own the supreme court.

He is currently detailing his 60 FULL MINUTES of waiting around trying to get someone to sell him a computer in response to their chipper “how was your buying experience in our store?” automated e-mail.

last time around I was in the dem office in a small town in SW Alaska (actually a “biggish” town for alaska with a populaiton of 9000, -4 from the east coast) and we were calling our call list but everyone had voted so we gave up.

Ohio (or some such eastern state, in any case a state which made it obvious, watched on streaming video because our local “office” couln’dt afford cable) was called and we whooped and celebrated.

I still take personal credit for electing Begich (Dem at least, mavbe a DINO but at least a dem regardless of what you say) because it went into “overtime” counting absentee and early voting and when I heard there were about a 1000 votes in our district from early voting I knew we had it since I’d spent a couple of months canvasing and getting early voting. And it was so.

Aw, this pic reminds me of my similarly-proportioned white cat (with the aftermarket black tail instead of Tunch’s orange) whose kidneys failed in August. He would squawk and insist that the faucet run, and then he’d at least half the time end up getting so excited he’d have hiccups.

@CA Doc:
Thanks. Wow, I’d consider a Bera win to be quite a coup–don’t know if it’s the most hotly contested house race in the country, but certainly in the top few. I’m in an adjacent district, so it’s more than a passing interest.

@Rosie Outlook: Recently we were subjected to “team-building” activities where I work (or try to, when I’m not forced to waste half the day playing stupid games). My fellow victims and I got to wondering why this foolishness appeals to the corporate mentality. Any ideas?

Cults often force initiates to do ridiculous things in a social setting to test their boundaries and susceptibility. If the ‘mark’ doesn’t run away screaming this has the added effect of increasing the psychological sunk cost for the cult member, making it all that harder to leave, because nobody wants to admit they were wrong and look and feel ridiculous. Instead, they will grasp for any justification for their increasingly fringe and weird beliefs and sink deeper into the cult to avoiding competing information that would induce cognitive dissonance.

California Sec of State released voter registration numbers–total registered is 18.2M, a record. Some breakdown, as follows.

Democrats continue to hold a double-digit lead in registration over other parties in the state, with the party’s share of the electorate rising slightly since September to 43.7 percent. The percentages of Republicans and voters who decline to identify a party preference both dropped by less than a percentage point during the same period. Republican registration dipped below 30 percent. About a fifth of voters did not pick a party.

Republicans dropping below 30%, hmmmm, I wonder where the number will settle? Just three more points….

Only if Christie is driving a steamroller. insHannity just said that unemployment is up and that it’s due to Obama baing a failure. Not a word about the numbers of employed going up, nope. Not a word. Palin is now on, serving a word salad that smells like shit that I’m sure the rubes are gobbling up. Earlier insHannity had clips of victims of Sandy telling Faux that they aren’t getting the assistance they need, then interrupting each clip with a clip of Obama saying something positive about ‘being there for the victims’ and making it look like the people they are interviewing are mad at Obama and not their local officials.

Time to change the channel, Palin’s word salad is just too much to tolerate.

He is currently detailing his 60 FULL MINUTES of waiting around trying to get someone to sell him a computer in response to their chipper “how was your buying experience in our store?” automated e-mail.

The cutting of staff hours was one reason why the guy from Dixons in the UK who they hired to run retail — and Dixons is a famously downmarket electronics retailer — got shitcanned this week. He should let them have it.

@amk: Well, they could probably explain the finer points of stuffing a goat into the back of a Chevy Astro Van, and they are often remarkably adept at picking fruit. Oh, there’s also that thing about their calendar ending in 2012. =)

@Mnemosyne: And don’t forget the lunging under your feet as you are going down the stairs. I keep telling mine he is not in the will, but every night he tries to send me head first into oblivion as I head down to our bedroom..

I’ve been watching Fox News for a couple of nights now, just to see how conservatives are dealing with the new polls. O’Reilly is basically just a chatty, almost shoot the shit kind of program with him and some of his guests throwing barbs against the President. Sean Hannity’s show is an entirely different program. Not only did he do two segments with Karl Rove tonight, he seems absolutely convinced that Romney is going to win this. Oh boy.

I read that ‘Rasslin’ Linda had budgeted $70M for her Senate run – and I just saw a poll at the GOS which had Chris Murphy up by a 52 – 43 margin, which causes me no end of joy: not least (should those numbers hold) because it will mean a retained (D) seat, but, hopefully, show the country the futility of trying to buy your way into the Senate by blanketing the airwaves with slick-but-annoying TV ads 24/7.

Seriously: my wife, who only watches marginally more TV than I do, says she has seen just two or three ads for Murphy on local (NYC area) TV: and I have (for some odd reason) NEVER seen even one. Vs. Linda McMahon’s relentless media offensive (emphasis on “offensive”!).

@jimmiraybob: My vet gave me this great tip about bathing cats: Wrap all their paws with masking tape beforehand. It doesn’t hurt them, they can’t very well hurt you, and by the time they can get all the masking tape off, they’re pretty much dry. Still, it’s a two-person job……….

When i sit on the “throne” next to the tub, my cat Nunchuk will jump in the tub and i turn on a little stream that he loves to drink. One time I ran a hot bath and then sat on the “throne” He came in, scoped the place and then tried to jump in. I blocked him in mid-air and deflected him back with slightly damp front paws on his part. When i told my wife she suggested I should have let him go. I think i would have suffered on the dismount.

When I lived in an apartment with a shower curtain, my late great cat Boris would sit on the edge of the tub and peer around the curtain to make sure I was okay with all of that water pouring down on me. We started calling him Safety Officer Boris since he had clearly put himself in charge of making sure we survived taking a shower.

Our 15lb. rescue dog Zevon does this, too. Like all proper dogs, he’s very dubious about indoor-immersion rituals in general, but he’ll sit patiently on the bathroom floor all the while the Spousal Unit reads a book in the tub for three hours at a time. We are careful to ask him if he wants to borrow a cell phone, so he’ll be ready to dial 911 if things go Terribly Wrong somehow…

Too many people here freak me out, the way they seem to take such joy in freaking their cats out. I’m sure it’s not as horrible as I perceive it, but the whole thing just is too sadistic for me.

Most of us, like Cole, talk a much bolder game than we’d ever actually imlpose on our cats.

Or dogs. I’ve never been a big fan of the fake-throw, although I have been driven to such low deception by some OCD tennis-ball-chasers of my acquaintance. Worst was a schnickerdoodle, schnauzer-cocker-poodle cross, who would literally bark non-stop until you threwtheballthrewtheballthrewtheball. As she got older & developed congestive heart disease, she would chase the ball until she literally passed out cold… and if she was not indulged, she’d bark until she passed out. (Stubborn little girl, but ot-nay the ightest-bray bulb in the chandelier).

Housemates pick on each other, sometimes on purpose. Dogs taunt other dogs, cats taunt their fellow cats, and cats love to torture dogs…

Not on the Repub ticket, he won’t. If (once) he loses to That Black Guy, after the yearlong marathon where he beat all the Rabid Rightwingers’ darlings by sheer weight of money, Romney will be lucky if he’s not actually tarred & feathered during his concession speech. And all the Great White Hopes who’ve been standing on one foot waiting for 2016 — Jeb!, Christie, Rubio — will be at the front of the mob with the hot tar.

Oh, I am. But our last dog was a Labrador (a breed that really seems to need to chew things) and when she got frustrated at that or some torment the kids were dishing out, she’d just come over and start gnawing on my forearm. So it worked out well for everyone.

Besides, I’d played that trick enough that even though she was no Einstein, she’d get suspicious anyway and start sniffing around me for where the ball really went.

I been there, man. It’s almost physically painful to resist doing evil little things like that. I must confess that I have been known to abuse my vacuum cleaner privileges at the expense of the cats. It’s safer for the human perpetrator and cruelly hilarious to watch them do battle with the fearsome dragon. I’m going to hell.